Where did the HTML in my note body go?

One of our customers asked us to put up a custom message in the Sumatra Holiday tool.  This message needed a small bit of HTML formatting in EWS Managed API v1.2 code.  A "slam-dunk."  Yet this simple HTML produces horrible output:

Microsoft published a KB article that confirmed the problem:  meeting request that you send from an EWS application is in plain text format instead of HTML format when an attendee opens the request by using Outlook in online mode

The fix? Patch your servers! Here's the link: Update Rollup 3 for Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 2 (KB2685289)

We patched our dev server this weekend and confirmed it works!

(PS: we're tagging this as an API bug, but it really isn't.....

Get Time Zones for your users via PowerShell

We recently released a cmdlet that bulk-inserts holidays in Exchange 2010 (see the Sumatra website or the Sumatra Blog).

A holiday is a simple all day calendaring event in Outlook. Yet simple calendaring events can be tricky! Consider: when your end users work in different time zones! If you force an all day event into one time zones, all users who are not in that time zone will see their holidays span multiple days. Not a happy scenario. What's the solution?

We wrote a script that uses Exchange 2010 "get-mailboxRegionalConfiguration" cmdlet to find the timezones. If used in conjunction with get-mailbox, you can output a file that has the user information plus the timezone. Problem solved!

This script produces a file that outputs PrimarySMTPAddress + TimeZone:

#Define your 'default' timezone (if none is set)
$myDefaultTimezone="Eastern Standard Time"

#Define the output file
$myOutputFile="userlist.txt"

#Define the list of User Accounts to process
$myMailboxList = get-mailbox -Filter {RecipientTypeDetails -eq "UserMailbox"}  select-object Identity,PrimarySMTPAddress

#If file exists, delete the file
$fileExists=test-Path $myOutputFile
if ($fileExists -eq "True"){del $myOutputFile}


#Loop through list and get
foreach ($t in $myMailboxList) {
    $priSMTP=$t.PrimarySMTPAddress
    $xi=get-mailboxRegionalConfiguration -Identity $t.Identity
    if ($xi.TimeZone -eq $Null) {$tt=$myDefaultTimezone} Else {$tt=$xi.TimeZone}
    write-output "$priSMTP $tt" >> $myOutputFile
}

write-output "Done!  see the file $myOutputFile"

You can also download getUserTimezones.zip

If you have another way, please share!

-Russ

Sumatra Utilities documentation is out

A quick update on the Sumatra Utilities for Exchange 2007: we've field proven them in an East Coast medical school with over 8000 users.

Insertion of 10 holidays for these users took about three hours.

We consider that a success.

We're running our final regression testing on them now but we can give you the link to the documentation (Word format).

http://www.sumatra.com/Sumatra%20Utilities%20Manual.doc

Stay tuned.

Sumatra Utilities for E2K7 available next week

We're not trying to drive you crazy -- just trying to make sure everything works and getting our legalese squared away.

The Sumatra Utilities for Exchange 2007 (including holiday server-side insertion capability) will be available next week.

Keep checking here for updates.

Holiday insertion server-side in Exchange 2007

Remember the Sumatra Utilities for Exchange 2003 and their beloved server-side holiday insertion capability?

And you remember how every year you ask us if we've done it for Exchange 2007?

Well, we (finally) rebuilt it for Exchange Web Services. Check out this example.

Friends of Sumatra can use this at no charge (you all know who you are) so just ask us and we'll send it out.

For everyone else we're actually going to charge for the capability this time.

Which brings me to the purpose of this posting: If you have any preferences on how we should do this -- drop us a line. If you do not know our emails you can use our contact form.

Oh yeah -- this is also going to include the broken meeting check, the terminated user utility, and the interface for managing conference room statistics (the full application for the last one will be a separate follow-on offering).

Server-Side Exchange 2007 Holiday Insertion

OK. We know you keep asking for it.

The Sumatra Utilities has had this sort of weird cult following (and we mean weird -- we're not sure we want to meet some of the people who send us email) for its ability to insert holidays server-side on Exchange. But based on CDO it was restricted to Exchange 2003 (and those daring Luddites with a 2000 fixation).

Since the E2K7 code was wide-open for ResourceWatch development, Russ's team just kinda, sorta, threw in the holiday insert. So Memorial Day on my calendar went in server-side via an improved holiday CSV.

And since the code is based on the migration tool we have options to tag "(Migrated)", which was how I actually did it the first time before I went "D'Oh!":

So in answer to the questions we always get:

• Yes, we're now automatically inserting our own Keyword so it's easier to undo (for those of you who ignore our advice by inserting on your production server without an isolated test).
• No, you can't use an existing .hol file. We actually have more capability than the .hol files allow.
• Yes, if you still want to do this client-side there are plenty of directions online, like Customize the Outlook calendar with your company's important HR dates
• Yes, we added the capability to do a "Stockholder's Meeting" on June 30, 2009 from 12:00 noon to 3:00 PM in ALL Calendars server-side.
• Yes, we're field testing it with a few folks now.
• No, we haven't decided if it's going to be a give-away. We're leaning towards bundling it.

E2K3 to E2K7 Upgrade Problem: Exchange Resource Manager

Two of our favorite people on the planet, Nancy and Yoly at Qualcomm, report problems with Exchange Resource Manager resources when going from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007.

Symptoms
Meeting invitations/updates sent to conference rooms that have been moved from Exchange 2003 with ERM to Exchange 2007 with resource calendar assistant are ignored and/or deleted without being processed.

The Problem
ERM has a bug that causes mailbox attribute 0x8217 to be set to 1 (organizer) when it places meetings on the calendar.

In OutlookSpy you would see this:



A Microsoft representative was able to confirm via testing that when 0x8217 is altered prior to the resource mailbox being moved from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007 the E2k7 Resource Calendar Assistant is unable to act on the meeting invitation/update and treats it as a non-meeting message (deletes it).

The fix is to set 0x8217 to 3 (invitee), with potentially 1000s of meetings with this issue it would be very time consuming to do it manually, so we wrote one to fix it.

Not surprisingly we put it into the Sumatra Utilities.

The latest version has the following additional flags:

/ERM:fix

This can change all calendar items with x8217=1 (from ERM) and set the value to 3.

If the /ERM switch is used without the :fix then the tool will run and produce counts.

If the ":fix" qualifier is used, then the appointments will be updated.

Can also be used with /e (show all) and /s (summary)

So for example, looking at the resource "LCD":

su /ERM /u:lcd /e

Gives the following REPORT in outfile.txt

User:lcd
Resource Mtg Organizer Mtg Name MtgStart MtgEnd Meeting Type
Validated lcd lcd - test test test - - Appointment
1 Resources processed.
1 Total meetings read.
1 meetings with ERM flag=1
0 meetings skipped (didn't have flag=1)
ReadFrom:
WroteTo: outfile.txt

su /ERM:fix /u:lcd /e

Will fix and record which ERM-managed meetings are repaired.

Update to Sumatra Utilities - current version 2.3.25

Kudos to Shabana at Marfic who found a bug in holiday insertion with the Sumatra Utilities.

We had to rev the code so that holidays would insert correctly with the new CDO that Microsoft issued to cause fix the DST fiasco.

If you're trying to insert Holidays please use version 2.3.25.

Using the Sumatra Utilities to archive appointments

In our continuing effort to make sure you don't think of the Utilities as something just to use to fix the looming Exchange DST crisis, we have a new feature to blog about:

archiving

Aside: you multinational companies shouldn't think it's almost over! I've gotten at least two inquiries from Europeans who are wondering about using the Utilities when the European Union reviews DST for its member nations. And "just move to Exchange 2007" is not the clear answer for everybody.

So why use the Utilities to archive? You could use automatic archiving to a PST file -- which will reduce the size of your local data and speed things. BUT if you want easy access to this data and still want to speed your calendar display, you can use the utilities to move all appointments before a certain date to a specified archive folder.

This gives you the best of both worlds: Better speed AND easy access (if you need it).

So to move all of user “riuliano”'s one-time (non-recurring) appointments before 8/2/2006 to a folder called “My Old Cal Items” use this command:

Su /u:riuliano /dt:8/2/2006 /mc /fn:"my old cal items"

If you do not have your aliases as SMTP addresses, use this syntax:

Su /fn:”my old cal items” /mc /dt /smtp /dn:lab.sumatra.com /u:russ_iuliano@lab.sumatra.com

to move appointments for user russ_iuliano@lab.sumatra.com (identified by SMTP address, /smtp) one-time (non-recurring) appointments before yesterday to a folder called “my old cal items”.

Not sending Updates? Check for meeting corruption with the /x flag.

It's easy to understand why you might find the Update storm a hassle. And you've probably made sure your Microsoft reps have heard this.

So the latest Microsoft Time Zone Update tool lets you suppress Updates.

But, after you've read the warnings about what could happen if you suppress Updates in KB 933146, you should also check out some other warnings about this being contraindicated behavior in the following other Microsoft articles:

• KB 899704: Description of common scenarios in which Calendar information may be removed from the Calendar or may be inaccurate (search for "Update")
• Outlook Meeting Requests: Essential Do's and Don'ts: "Send Updates" is the second point here.

As always -- our credo is "test the snot out of software in your lab before you deploy to your production environment." If you have no problems in your lab then odds are in your favor when you move to production.

Quick Test for Corrupt Meetings

In the course of various post-migration follow ups we've heard of corrupt / damaged meetings (and improper updates is only one of the possible vectors of infection). So the Utilities have a /x flag to check:

su /u:exec_cr /x

Will look for mis-matches (i.e., a meeting in the OWNER's calendar that is in a different time / place from the entry in the calendar for the Executive Conference Room (exec_cr).

This particular flag got most of its use early on in smaller Exchange installations, so it currently might not scale to large organizations very well (but neither did some of the other flags until a few weeks ago).

The /debug flag

Along with the revised /SMTP flag we added a /DEBUG flag to version 2.3.20.

Actually we re-added /debug since it was in previous versions. Before this whole Exchange DST fiasco from Microsoft the Utilities did not run into a lot of widely different organizations so we didn't really need it.

Invoking /debug adds additional information to the error.log file.

If your SMTP addresses do not include Alias@domainname you need the /SMTP flag

In the hundreds of calendar server migrations we've done we've run into just about everything at least once. When we run into them twice we put it into the software so the third time is no problem.

Such it the case with the new, improved /SMTP flag.

You can thank Femi and Ron from T Rowe Price for giving us the concrete example of why we should make it more general. Originally we only dealt with SMTP addresses rather than aliases for automatic meeting archiving. (Keep in mind, the Utilities are one of those Swiss pocket knife tools that does more than DST.)

Why do you want this? If your SMTP addresses do NOT include the address Alias@yourdomain i.e., Joebob.Exchangeadmin@yourdomain.com instead of joebob2321 which is the Alias / Logon ID / directory name which your data is stored under in backofficestorage.

So the NEW version of the Utilities allows you to profile and act on IDs as SMTP addresses using the following syntax:

su /u:joebobexchangeadmin@yourdomain.com /DST /SMTP

You can also use this syntax with SMTP addresses in an input file.

Main symptom of the need for this syntax:

• You are able to "drill down" in backofficestorage using the subst command and see calendar items
• BUT you are still getting -13 errors

February 25, 2006: We're adding this capability to the /a and /db flags (which we have done and are testing now). Owing to some very bad behavior by a major company founded by H Ross Perot we're deciding whether to release this to the public or not.

Permissions - Your most likely error

Let's say you have the Sumatra Utilities installed and are getting an error with one of your users (typically -13 User Does not Exist on this server). And your error.log file looks something like this:

Debug: Commandline: /u:riuliano /DST:ALLDATA /DN:lab.sumatra.local riuliano WAS NOT Validated (User Does not Exist on this server) url:file://./backofficestorage/lab.sumatra.local/MBX/riuliano/-13NOT Validated:

Easiest way to make absolutely sure of permissions is to walk the tree using the account you're using to get to this:

• Shell into DOS
• Use the command subst o: \\.\backofficestorage
• You should be able to drill down to the mailbox you want to profile (if you cannot you either do not have permissions and need to fix it, or the user is not on that Back End server)
• See the following screen shot example
  

NOTE: please remember to remove the temporary drive when you are done (and BEFORE you close the DOS window) by entering

• subst /d o:

Why do the Utilities require .NET Framework 2.0?

We have just gotten our second contact from a user who was wondering "Why are the Sumatra Utilities built with .NET 2.0?"

A fair question - a few of us here at Sumatra have been frustrated by the additional overhead and complexity that .NET 2.0 entails and yearn for the old version of the Sumatra Utilities which did not require 2.0 (and can be downloaded here). Remember it's a year old, so there is NO /DST switch but the /a for Accepting invitations and the /db for double-booking are there (but in the old version /db only looks 15 days ahead).

So why do we require it?

Security.

As the article New and Improved Security in the .NET Framework 2.0 shows, .NET 2.0 has a much stronger security model, and that was a very hard argument to refute.

/DST:alldata -- you can get even MORE info from Exchange

Suppose totals are not enough and you really need to be able to get a log of ALL meetings and appointments that are in the DST interval. Is there a way to do that in the Sumatra Utilities?

Absolutely, and it does not even require you download a new version.

The command

su /u:zyg /DST:alldata

will put into outfile.txt all of the meeting and appointment titles in the DST interval for user "zyg", with the Start Times, End Times, what it thinks the Rebased Time Zone will be, the organizer, pretty much all the information you want to have if you need to have a safety net for your critical schedule users.

The output file is very easy to parse:

User:zyg
Alias MtgStartTime(UTC) MtgEndTime(UTC) Timezone Rebased TZ? Mtg Name Organizer Meeting Type
zyg 3/10/2007 5:00:00 PM 3/11/2007 1:00:00 PM (GMT-05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada) 10 Appointment crossing new DST boundary 5:00 PM Sat to 11:00 AM Sun zyg@sumatra.local Appointment
zyg 3/12/2007 10:00:00 AM 3/12/2007 10:30:00 AM (GMT-05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada) Test recurring - zyg has client zyg@sumatra.local Recurring
zyg 3/12/2007 10:00:00 AM 3/12/2007 10:30:00 AM (GMT) Greenwich Mean Time : Dublin, Edinburgh, Lisbon, London Recurring Outlook meeting in GMT passing through Delta jam@sumatra.local Recurring
zyg 3/12/2007 10:00:00 AM 3/12/2007 10:30:00 AM GMT -0500 (Standard) / GMT -0400 (Daylight) OWA Recurring meeting - GMT jam@sumatra.local Recurring
zyg 3/12/2007 1:00:00 PM 3/12/2007 1:30:00 PM (GMT-05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada) Every Monday 10:00 AM zyg@sumatra.local Recurring (Exception)
zyg 3/12/2007 5:30:00 PM 3/12/2007 6:00:00 PM (GMT-05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada) 10 Tentative zyg@sumatra.local

The most successful strategy we've heard of is to do a "before Rebaser" and "after Rebaser" snapshot of the data most crucial to you.

We apologize for constantly using the examples of "zyg" and "russ", but when we used "ben" and "jerry" we used to get stern letters.

SU /a Flag -- What order does it use in accepting pending calendar items?

The Sumatra Utilities /a flag does the oldest email invitation first and proceeds to the newest. Think of it as First-Come First-Served.

This helps it to avoid accepting something that is out of date and replaced by a newer item.

It doesn't look at the time of the actual event -- it looks at the time of the event invitation.

Troubleshooting tips for users and FAQ for the Microsoft Calendar DST update tool

Gentle Reader,

Miss Meeting Manners received the following FAQ from our absolutely most knowledgeable and capable client, Nancy from Qualcomm. A soul intrepid beyond imagining she has undertaken this weekend to update all of her 10,000+ Exchange users with the Microsoft DST patches. She sent us this FAQ and invited us to share it with others in the same situation as she is. If you use it please credit her, she deserves it.


Why am I getting spammed with calendar items? Can I delete them all?
Since Outlook uses email to manage calendar updates, the only way to update a meeting and fix the time is to send out the change to all the invitees. Unfortunately the tool does not differentiate between Accepts and Declines so even if you declined the meeting before you will once again have the opportunity to decline the update again. Updates are ONLY going out for meetings that fall between 3/11 and 3/31. It is NOT for every single meeting on your calendar.

What order should a user accept the meetings in?
Accept them in the same order that you would normally. Generally we recommend from oldest to newest, deleting the items that show up as “Out of Date”. Since the Calendar update tool will only be sending 1 update out for each meeting – you should not run into any issues with conflicting updates to the same meeting

My meetings are showing up in a different time zone!
This may happen if the tool has incorrectly determined what time zone your calendar should be in. Contact your Exchange Administrator with the name of the user, what time zone their meetings SHOULD be in – and they can do a one off adjustment if necessary. If the user does not want to wait for a ticket to be escalated – the Help Desk should be able to walk them through running the Outlook Time zone tool – more info located here : http://support.microsoft.com/kb/931667/en-us

Some of my meetings did not get updated- what do I do now?
While we do our best to identify every affected meeting there may be instances where a meeting is missed. Have the user wait until after their Windows machine is patched point – then all they will need to do to fix the meeting is send out an update, moving the meeting to the correct time if necessary. The update will put the meeting back onto their calendar at the corrected time.

Some of my meetings that I created over the weekend were moved back an hour and they shouldn’t have been!
The tool is unable to differentiate between meetings that have the right DST stamp and the wrong DST stamp. We are trying to minimize the number of “good” meetings that get moved by the tool by running it over the weekend and warning people not to create new meetings until Monday. If a user finds a good meeting was moved – please help them send out an update and move it back to the corrected time.

How do I know my meetings are OK?
Put the time of the meeting into the subject. This gives your invitees a very easy way to determine what time the meeting is supposed to be at – even if there are DST display problems.

Now that my meetings have been “fixed” - there is a double booking with the conference room – what do I do now?
We will be running reports before and after the tool is run to identify any double booking problems that may be caused and will assist users to resolve them on a case by case basis in the week after, well before the actual DST change.

DST Updating in Exchange: What the Heck Happened to my Managed Resources?

So let's say you've successfully modified the Time Zones for your Exchange Server, Outlook clients, and run the Time Zone Update Utility.

Your users haven't spontaneously burst into flame, but they are really curious what's happened to the conference rooms.

Accepting invitations for resources

First off: If you needed to turn off your Auto-Accept agent -- or resource management software, and are not running with an event sink that automatically accepts for you, you may have some meeting invitations in your resource Inboxes. Microsoft AAA you should be OK with as long as you set the Depth to "3" as per Microsoft's instructions -- where we've seen issues it's been with the Third-Party Resource Managers (Who shall remain diplomatically nameless).

The Sumatra Utilities can automatically accept all of these.

Use the following syntax:

su /a /u:conf_room

to accept ALL of the invitations in a given Resource mailbox.

Note you can also use the /in:file.txt command to deal with a group (one line per resource alias).

After doing this of course, it is very reasonable to assume that you may have double-bookings.

Determining Double-Booking

You could open each resource and scan the calendars one day at a time, but enterprise calendaring software is supposed to make your life easier not harder.

To produce an output file highlighting double bookings, enter the following:

su.exe /u:conf_room /DB /ND:45

NOTE – for double bookings, the MAX DAYS (ND) is 45 days from today (you cannot change the start date).

Also this will take the /in:filename.txt parameter.

What if the resource is Triple (or more!) booked?

How much functionality do you want in free utilities? Seriously, we handle that -- but it will do all the cross-pairs of double-booking, i.e., if you have triple--booked meetings "1", "2" and "3" it reports in the outfile.txt report that "1" and "2" conflict, "1" and "3" conflict, "2" and "3" conflict .... you get the idea.

But the good thing is that you've got it in one local place from a relatively speedy method.

An example of part of the output file follows for a quadruple-booked case in room "cr222":

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Timer: Start=2/5/2007 5:40:30 AM (ver v2.3.18)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

User:cr222Resource Mtg Organizer Mtg Name MtgStart MtgEnd IsDblBooked Meeting Type

Validated cr222
cr222 cr222@sumatra.local 4 2/5/2007 9:30:00 AM 2/5/2007 3:00:00 PM Double Booked with 3 Appointment
cr222 cr222@sumatra.local 3 2/5/2007 10:30:00 AM 2/5/2007 2:00:00 PM Double Booked with 4 Appointment
cr222 cr222@sumatra.local 4 2/5/2007 9:30:00 AM 2/5/2007 3:00:00 PM Double Booked with 2 Appointment
cr222 cr222@sumatra.local 2 2/5/2007 11:30:00 AM 2/5/2007 1:00:00 PM Double Booked with 4 Appointment
cr222 cr222@sumatra.local 3 2/5/2007 10:30:00 AM 2/5/2007 2:00:00 PM Double Booked with 2 Appointment
cr222 cr222@sumatra.local 2 2/5/2007 11:30:00 AM 2/5/2007 1:00:00 PM Double Booked with 3 Appointment
cr222 cr222@sumatra.local 4 2/5/2007 9:30:00 AM 2/5/2007 3:00:00 PM Double Booked with 1 Appointment
cr222 cr222@sumatra.local 1 2/5/2007 12:00:00 PM 2/5/2007 12:30:00 PM Double Booked with 4 Appointment

DST Updating in Exchange - How Big is Your Coming Email Update Storm?

The Microsoft methods for updating Time Zones for the coming DST shift will require that meetings in the relevant time delta be re-proposed.

It does not take a lot of head scratching to realize that this will potentially result in a lot of email traffic on your servers. It's also reminiscent of how the dentist tells you an X-ray only gives you the same amount of radiation you'd get during a day on the beach (conveniently ignoring the fact that she's giving you the same dose in a few milliseconds instead of eight hours).

So your first question is probably: How much traffic can I expect to have?

The Sumatra Utilities (available for free) can give you the answer.

At the command prompt run:

su /u:jsmith /DST

To get a count of all "jsmith"'s meetings and appointments in the relevant region.

The output looks like this:

Alias Num Appts Num Recur Master Num Recur Instances Num Recur Exceptions Total Items Total Cross Check
jsmith 12 2 19 1 34 34

The final number is the total of all affected calendar entries (meetings and appointments) in the area.

If you choose to do only recurring meetings, look at the third number form the left: Number of Recurring instances. Each of those will require two emails: one coming IN to that guest and one going OUT from that guest as a response.

The totals of these for all your users is a close approximation of the total amount of email traffic you can expect. Why is it not exact? Two reasons:

1. If guests have DECLINED the meetings previously then they're not on the calendar so don't count in the totals but they will receive updates
2. Users who have been invited but have not yet responded may not have this calendar object on their calendars yet.

A quick look at the output file will show you it's tab-delimited so easy to load into a spreadsheet for analysis.

This will work on resource accounts as well.

Our next topics: How to use Rhino Event Sink to automatically accept all updates and how to use the Utilities to deal with managed resources and discover double-bookings without opening all your resource calendars.

/DST switch for the Sumatra Utilities

We've added an additional flag /DST to the Sumatra Utilities as an aid to auditing how many meetings and appointments will be affected by the coming Microsoft Rebasing tool.

su /in:sutest.txt /DST

at the command prompt (where sutest.txt has user aliases zyg, riuliano, kelly, tralfax, and jam one on each line) will result in a text file like the following, outputting a total of all of each user's meetings and appointments in the DST transition zone from March 11, 2007 to April 1, 2007 and from October 28, 2007 to November 4, 2007.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Timer: Start=2/1/2007 9:09:23 AM (ver v2.3.12)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
User Input file:sutest.txt
Alias Num Appts Num Recur Master Num Recur Instances Num Recur Exceptions Total Items Total Cross Check
zyg 12 2 19 1 34 34
riuliano 2 0 3 0 5 5
Error -1 user tralfax does not exist in the GC: GC://sumatra.local
kelly No Meetings found.
jam 1 0 0 0 1 1

So each number represents the total affected

• Appointments (i.e., with no guests)
• Recurring Master Meetings (i.e., which the user Owns)
• Recurring Instances
• Recurring Exceptions
• Total Items
• Total cross check

• Recurring Master Appointments: This is the total of master meetings that originate (i.e., first instance) in the DST Delta.
• Recurring Instances: This are the instances of ALL recurring meetings (these become exceptions after you run the MS Rebasing tool) in the DST Delta for that user (whether or not they own them). For example, a weekly recurring meeting counts for 3 instances
• Recurring Exceptions: These are exceptions set up by the owner. I.e., the Owner could move one instance to another time. These will also be changed by the Rebaser)
• Totals: The total Microsoft Exchange reports of all appointments and meetings in the DST Delta
• Cross Check: This is a Sumatra count the meetings we write out in the DST Delta period
  Totals and Cross Check should equal.
  
• If Totals and Cross Check don't agree it's because there are either a.) data corruptions in the calendar (which we could write a book about) or b.) someone's been operating on the calendar while you've been generating the report.

Using these numbers allows you to gauge the scope of the problem you have to deal with as the new DST transition looms forward.

Error.log will also produce information to help debug in case the Utilities do not execute on your system.

The /DST switch is completely non-modifying. It reports on which meetings, exceptions, and appointments are in the date range in question.